The good news is I finally managed to run my motorcycle out of gas, so it’s ready for winter storage.  The bad news is I was north-bound on Main street at the time,  in a thunderstorm.  The good news is Donette has today off so she could run me a can of gas.  The bad news is my cell phone is dead.  The good news is I was near a bus stop, and had my bus pass with me.  That’s three “goods” and only two “bads,” so I guess that means it’s going to be a great day.

Happy pending Thanksgiving.  Hopefully everybody loaded their freezers with $0.69 turkeys that will invariably stay there until next year.  (Or the year after, or the year after…)

We got a bit of an early start on that weekend.  We actually went out Thursday night for a great dinner at Marina Grog & Galley.  We met Donette’s parents out there to celebrate their 52nd anniversary.  (Congrats!)  Aside from a long drive there and back it was a fantastic meal.  I had a ribeye myself, which was perfectly cooked;  No doubt the best steak I’ve had in a long time.  If I was ordering again I would have chosen a baked potato over the rice, but I was trying to be healthy.  (Which NEVER pays off, especially when you consider I was already tackling a 14 oz. ribeye.  Would a big buttery potato really have made that much difference at that point?)  Anyway, we’ll be going back sometime in the future.  It’s definitely in the “special occasion only” range for us price-wise, but another one will come up sooner or later I’m sure.

Friday we got back into our rut down at the good ol’ Brooksider.  The Group sorta threw me off by sitting outside though;  They are generally a fair-weather group.  I wasn’t really dressed warm enough for patio-sitting, but they cranked up the heaters and it was tolerable.  We stayed a bit longer than usual too.  There was some sort of MMA-related event going on inside so we stuck around and watched it.  I don’t really know what it was, or how to describe it.  They called it a “weigh-in” but there was no scale involved.  Who knows.  It was a spectacle to be sure, and we love a good spectacle as much as the next person.

Saturday I crossed The River for the second time in as many weeks.  Getting a little wacky to be sure.  Martin had generously offered to fire up the smoker(s) again and sent out an email to the world in case anybody wanted to smoke up some holiday fare.  It turned out to be quite a popular offering too.  For my part, I had a nice brisket to do which will be going out to Mom’s this Thursday.  There were also 6 turkeys, 8 slabs of ribs, 4 other briskets, and two pork butts.  Wow.  Yeah the smokers were full.  They are big though, so there was plenty of room.

We stayed the night up at Martin’s, sort of like a little mini-vacation.  If you’re going to drive that far, might as well make it worth the while.  We had a lot to do Sunday though so we got up and scampered back across the river bright and early.  As it turned out, “a lot to do” turned into reading the paper, watching football, and surfing the Web all day.  We did take a brief foray up to the gym but it was a rather lackadaisical effort.  We made a weak attempt at working out, then sat in the hot tub for the better part of an hour.  Hey, we can still say “We went to the gym this weekend.”

I rode the motorcycle in again this morning;  Brrrr.  I think the riding season has about come to an end.  Of course, I’ve been saying that for several weeks now so who knows how long I will stretch it out.  I’m definitely switching back to the scooter if nothing else, I know that much.  While the motorcycle might have a few style points, the scooter is infinitely more practical for the morning commute.  Matter of fact, I rode it the vast majority of the time this year.  For one thing, the windshield makes it much more comfortable in the chilly weather.  I didn’t think it would make a huge difference, but over the last two mornings I found out it most certainly does.  You can carry a lot more stuff on the scooter too.  It has tons of storage space;  The motorcycle is limited to whatever fits in my backpack.  And then there is the drive itself.  The scooter is exempt from all those pesky driving rules and regulations, which comes in handy, especially with the dozens of brutally un-synchronized stoplights I have along my route.  Bus lanes are fair game for scooters too, as well as a few other unmentionable maneuvers that might be considered gross violations of the law for any other vehicle.  Mind you, all these exemptions are purely in my mind, hopefully karma doesn’t catch up with me.

I got my money’s worth out of that weekend for once.  We were busy pretty much all the time, which makes the weekend seem a bit short perhaps but at least I didn’t feel like I wasted it again.  We even went out Friday night, a bit of a rarity.  I’m usually too beat down on Fridays, but this time around we had volunteered to work at a poker fund raiser so that got us out of the house despite the driving rain.  I ended up being a dealer, which was fun.  I had no idea how to deal poker, but as it turned out it was easy enough and none of the participants seemed overly concerned with the details of the game anyway.  We were there well into the night;  Quite the late Friday for us.

Saturday we got up, slowly got around, and headed up to the Northlands for a day of cooking at the Martin’s house.  Donette’s family was stocking up on food for the holidays, so we had two briskets and two pork butts on for them, and Martin did another two pork butts, a turkey, and a slab of ribs.  Might as well load the smoker up if you’re burning fuel.  While all that was sitting happily in the smoker, we worked on a mojo-batch of gumbo too.  With all the roux-stirring and chopping and boiling, it took nearly as long as the briskets.  We came out of the day with a fridge full of food though, so all the effort was well-spent.  After all that work the night rather strangely morphed into an evening of impromptu parties.  I don’t know if that is typical Northland behavior or not, hard to tell without more data.  At any rate, we ended up at the neighbors house for quite a while, and then a small mob descended on Martin’s house late at night, and a party developed over there.

Sunday we got around even slower than Saturday.  First we dealt on all the food from the day before.  Got all the pork and brisket divided up into more manageable portions and food-saved it all, and froze the gumbo for some future event.  After that Donette promptly retired to the couch, and I went over to Ronnie’s house to watch the Chiefs spectacle.  Despite the less-than-entertaining game we had a good time of it.  These events are getting to be quite the “thing” lately.  Everybody brings a dish and we make a decent party of it.  Beats sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the Brooksider all afternoon, where you can’t even hear the TV.  Heck, yesterday Ronnie even turned on the heat in the house, I imagine for the first time this year.  It works very well too…  It got so hot in the house I spent the better part of the game on the front porch watching the TV through the window.

I am rather less that inspired to type this up.  My four-day weekend is coming to an end and I’m rather disappointed that I have, for all intents and purposes, wasted it.  Bummer.  Friday, as a matter of fact, I didn’t do anything at all.  Later in the evening we did meet up with the Martins and Browns down at the P&L to celebrate the Martin’s anniversary.  We went to McFadden’s;  First time I’ve been there as far as I can remember.  Aside from being ridiculously loud, we had a fine time.

Saturday Donette took off for St. Louis with Susan, and that’s when the trouble set in.  Left to entertain myself, I will more often than not just sit on the couch.  Luckily a co-worker called later in the day and invited me to a party out in Blue Springs.  Not sure about the wisdom of a work-related function on my long weekend, but it was a good time.  Musta been anyway, I stayed much longer than I planned.  Took care of my whole day, as a matter of fact.

Sunday I very slowly got around, thrown off by the time change as always.  It took me a while to catch on, but I finally figured out I’d gotten up at 4:30 in the morning.  Rats.  By the time the football games rolled around, I felt like I’d already been up a full day.  I wandered down to the Brooksider to see what was up, and what do you know, they had the football games on all 25 TV’s.  I pulled up a chair and commenced to wasting the day;  And waste it I did.

And today?  Looks to be a repeat of the rest of the weekend.  I’ve sorted out all my audio books, played with my webserver a bit, and watched ESPN for countless hours.  Whippy.